You need "nmake" to build Parrot under Windows with Microsoft compilers. It should be available via Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 or the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK 1.1. Download the latter from the Microsoft .NET Framework Homepage http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/.

Note: Parrot will not build using nmake v1.5 from the MS web site. Download one of the above toolkits to obtain a later version, either v7 or v8.

MinGW works with its GNU "make" (v 3.81) port and its name is 'mingw32-make.exe'. If you also have the Minimal SYStem (MSYS) installed, you will need to remove the Msys/bin folder from your PATH environment variable before calling "perl Configure.pl" and mingw32-make. Perl detects and calls /bin/sh.exe, if found, whenever shelling a new process. sh.exe causes problems for mingw32-make.exe because of its inability to handle Windows pathnames with backslashes. You must run "perl Configure.pl" and mingw32-make from a dosbox; running those commands from an MSYS shell window will experience the same backslash path problems.

Parrot no longer comes with its own ICU, thus you need to install it on your system if you want to use it. Note that ICU is now optional, you can build Parrot without it, by not installing it or asking Parrot to ignore it (--without-icu).

If you want to use precompiled binaries, do the following. Download the package matching your compiler, unpack it (say, into C:\usr\lib), add the bin directory to PATH, and tell Configure.pl to use it.

Note the step of creating the C:\usr\lib\data directory, as Parrot really wants it and the binary packages don't contain it. It doesn't need to contain anything though, as the data is pulled in from lib/icudt.lib, which contains the standard data in binary form.

If you use the Toolkit, be sure to follow the directions for setting up your build environment that come with the perl distributions. (README.win32 in the latest perl distribution.) You may have to substitute "Microsoft Platform SDK" wherever "Microsoft SDK" is listed, depending on the your install. You can ignore the entries regarding "win32/config.vc", but be sure to create the "link.bat" batch file. Copy the missing files mentioned, run the Toolkit Command Prompt, set the appropriate env vars, and you should be fine. (For env vars, you can update them under My Computer-> properties so they are available whenever you open a shell.)

Note: It is possible to use ActiveState Perl with the Toolkit: you don't have to compile your own perl.